Monday, March 23, 2020

Apostate prophet is disillusioned; prophets of God cursing disbelievers?

In answer to the video "Did Muhammad Forgive a Hostile Jewish Woman?"

Well Muhammad is a prophet in a long line of semitic prophet that were all sent as warners and givers of glad tidings, with prophecies of destruction and blessings depending on their addressees response to the divine calls. All of these prophets, whether Noah, Abraham, Moses or Jesus eventually invoked Allah's curse, which in Arabic translates to "laan", upon the most obdurate opponents seeking to harm the messengers. This Arabic "laan" means distancing from the mercy of God. Concretely, when the rejecters are eventually destroyed by the divine will, it is because the mercy of God has been removed from them. 

The most prominent evil personalities and groups of people, in the nations prophets and messengers were sent to, those whose behavior and rejection were most violent towards the prophetic message and the prophets themselves, were always pointed out by the prophets and scriptures of their specific time, with the prophets calling for God's curse and punishment to be inflicted upon them either in this world or the next, as well as the vindication of the righteous. The Quran sometimes mentioned them implicitly as in 44:47-50,74:11-27,91:12,96:9-19 or explicitly, as with Abu Lahab in Sura Lahab, but everytime, the exposition of their evil traits serves as a threat and warning to future people.

Among many Biblical similarities there is the case of the prophet David against Nabal and Doeg 1Sam25:39,Ps52, David's long-winded curse of Esau and his descendants who is implicitly meant
Ps109:8-15"May his days be few, and may someone else take his office of dignity. May his sons be orphans and his wife a widow. May his sons wander, and [people] should ask and search from their ruins..."
or the implicit mention of a group of people
Ps58:1-12"O God, smash their teeth in their mouth..Let them be rejected..The righteous man will rejoice because he saw revenge; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. And man will say, "Truly, the righteous man has reward; truly there is a God Who judges on earth".
Again a reference to a group of moral harassers and mockers upon whom David invokes God's curses Ps35:19-26. See also Ps63:9-12,69:22-29 or Ps137:8-9 in reference to the Babylonian oppressors
"Praiseworthy is he who will take and dash your infants against the rock"
or also Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar alternatively implied by the prophet Habakkuk who calls on God to destroy them throughout the chapter (Habakkuk2).

Another instance of allusion to a contemporary of the prophet happens in 68:10-16, where an individual's evil, sinful traits are exposed in order to lead the audience to distancing itself not only from the person in question but also from anyone bearing those immoral characteristics
"Do not at all yield to any mean swearer of many oaths, who is a slanderer and a backbiter, a hinderer of good and a transgressor, utullin/(connoting bad tempered, vengeful, coarse in manners, and shameless), and above all zanim/(connoting one known for his ignobleness and meanness. It is also used for those whose descent is unknown, which doesnt apply in this case to ibn al Mughirah who is implied here), only because he has abundance of wealth and children. When Our Revelations are recited to him, he says, "These are tales of the ancient times." Soon We shall brand him on the snout".
Because he thought he was a man of high prestige, his nose has been called a snout, and "branding him on the snout" means disgracing him. That is,
"We shall so disgrace him in the world and in the Hereafter that his mark of disgrace will become indelible".
The same idea is repeated elsewhere when speaking of the same kind of person to whom outward appearance is everything, and how the scorching wind of Hell destroys the skin, ie that most prominent aspect on which his entire personality is built and leaves him ugly. In the Hebrew Bible, with immense despise, God addresses Sennacherib of Assyria through the prophet Isaiah
2Kings19:28"I will place my ring in your nose and My bit in your lips".
See also Isa37:29 or Ps3:8 all speaking of severe and humiliating disfigurement of the wicked, a metonym for utter abasement. Here are other instances of curses by the prophets and their justifications. In the Quran it was not until after Pharao's obstinate rejection of God's signs that were actually meant at making him mend his ways 7:130-5,17:101-2,20:56,43:48 but that had the reverse effect of increasing his arrogance and folly, that his and his official's hearts were irreversibly hardened, kept away from the correct path 10:75-89,40:37.

It is interesting that the Bible says the entire opposite. Pharao's heart was hardened from the get go, before he even had a chance to reform himself by being exposed to Moses' message and miracles. In the Quran, instead of this being some kind of arbitrary and wanton divine curse, it is but a natural consequence of repeated, willful spiritual neglect to the point spirituality is degraded beyond repair. The Quran gives several transgressions, which, despite the warnings, brought Pharao closer to spiritual collapse; going as far as requesting for the building of a tower to reach for the heavens and disprove Moses' claims, misusing his powers without limits to prevent the people from practicing the true religion and establishing places of worship, and finally the direct attempt at murdering God's manifest messenger 44:20-22. Disbelievers of all times suffer the same consequences when they repeatedly deny God's signs 13:33. At that point, once it had been made clear that Moses' opponents will not desist from rejecting and will only increase further in their animosity, to the extent that Moses and his people had no other option but to flee, Moses invoked Allah's curse upon his enemies, asking that God might harden Pharao's heart and destroy what gave him the ability to oppress the people and corrupt the land, and God accepted Moses' prayer instantly. 

Similarily the nation of the prophet Nuh had reached such high levels of rejection and animosity towards their prophet, that a revelation informed Nuh that most of his nation will not believe no matter what and he should therefore stop grieving for their sins 11:36. 

All prophets, including Moses or Nuh, are sent as relentless reformers of their nations, first and foremost. Not as usherers of destruction. They are repeatedly depicted, as is done throughout the book as regards Muhammad, as grieving for their nations' sins, doing all they can to bring them to the path of righteousness. They remain in that passionate empathy for their people so long as the benefit of the doubt is there, in case their addresses still have a potential to desist from rejecting the divine message. But once it has been made manifest that their addressees will not desist and only increase in rebellion and hatred towards God, the messengers cannot remain empathic to those who willfully resist and hate God. 

Any believer facing an enemy of God, will treat that person as one's own enemy. Nuh then prayed for the spiritual blindess to be inflicted on the mischievous elite that kept opposing and leading people astray, so that they can swiftly become worthy of divine punishment, and the earth is cleansed from them and those who follow them and thus corruption ceases to be spread 71:24-8. Similar prayers of destruction as above, were made by prophets of the past the likes of Jeremiah or David, as reported in the Hebrew Bible, when confronted to the same kind of disbelievers
Jer12:1-3,15:15,17:18,18:18-22,Lam1:21-2,Ps5:10-11,7:10,55:16-24"May He incite Death upon them; may they descend to the grave alive..You, O God, shall lower them to the Pit of Destruction"
or here concerning the Amalekites
Ps68:2-4"May God rise; His enemies scatter, and those who hate Him flee from before Him. As smoke is driven away, You will drive [them] away; as wax melts before fire, the wicked will perish from before God. And the righteous will rejoice, yea, they will exult before God and they will delight with joy".
In Neh3:36-7 the prophet prays that the mockers be cursed, despised, and exiled as the Jews were. They were being derided as they were trying to reconstruct the Temple of Jerusalem just as Nuh and his followers were derided during the construction of the Ark.

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